How to Set Up Your Hosting in 5 Minutes Flat
By
Gregg
Hall,
a business consultant,
Navarre, Florida, U.S.A.
targetniches[at]yahoo.com
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Once
you've chosen your web hosting, you'll often find
that you're given a set of passwords and technical
details, before being left to more-or-less figure
it out on your own. If you haven't started a website
before, that can be a daunting experience.
Point
Your Domain at Your Host.
The
email you received should have contained the addresses
of some nameservers. Nameservers look like this: ns1.yourhost.com.
If you can't find it, take a look at the help section
of your host's website.
Once
you know your host's nameserver, go and log in at
your domain name registrar's website. They all work
differently, but somewhere you should see options
to configure your domain. Replace the registrar's
default nameservers with your host's nameservers.
Try
going to your domain by typing www.yourdomain.com
into your web browser. If it's working, you should
see a page telling you that your configuration was
successful. If it doesn't, then you should take a
break for a day or two – nameserver changes can still
take a while to spread across the whole Internet.
Test
Your FTP Account.
The
next step is to try uploading a page to your website
by FTP. Before you can do that, though, you need an
FTP program and a test page.
The
easiest way to make a test page is to open Notepad
and write "this is a test". Save it as index.html.
When it comes to the FTP program, you have a lot of
choice. There's something for everyone: some good
free ones to consider are Cute FTP (cuteftp.com),
Smart FTP (smartftp.com) and Bulletproof FTP (bpftp.com).
Once
you've done that, open the FTP program and ask it
to connect to your host's FTP server. This is usually
ftp.yourhost.com, although you might also now be able
to access it through your own website by using ftp.yourdomain.com.
Once you're connected, you should browse through the
folders looking for any existing index.html file –
it'll usually be in a folder called something like
'public' or 'public_html'. Upload your own index.html
over this one, and say 'yes' when you're asked if
you want to overwrite it.
Now,
go to your website in a web browser. If everything's
worked the way it should, then you'll see what you
wrote in that file right there on your website! You
can get started straightaway writing real content
to replace that little bit of text – it's always exciting
when you realise that your site is out there and ready
on the web right now. If you don't see the text, on
the other hand, then you might want to refer to your
host's support pages.
Set
Up an Email Address.
Almost
all web hosts allow you to configure your account
using a program called cPanel. The email your host sent you should tell you how to access it: it'll usually
be something like http://www.yourdomain.com:2082/cpanel.
If you know the address but you can't get to the page,
you might need to disable any firewall software you
have running on your computer.
If
you've got the cPanel address right, you'll be asked
for your username and password, and then you'll be
presented with a screen full of icons. Which icons
you have will depend on which features you got with
your web hosting. Look for the icon called 'email',
and then create any accounts you want there.
To
check your email, you need to add an account in your
email program. This shouldn't be too much trouble:
look for an option called 'Accounts' in your email
program's 'Tools' menu, and then tell it you want
to add an email account. You'll be asked for POP3
and SMTP servers (your host can provide these), as
well as the email address and password you just configured
in cPanel. Try sending an email to your new address
from one of your other accounts, to see if it works.
Other
Things to Do with cPanel.
It
varies from website to website exactly what you might
need to do with cPanel. It makes it easy, though,
to do whatever you might need to do, whether it's
adding new FTP accounts or creating databases. Don't
worry: cPanel is designed to stop you from messing
anything up, so it's fine to experiment with it a
little.
Gregg
Hall is a business consultant and author
for many online and offline businesses and lives in
Navarre Florida with his 16 year old son. Get small
business hosting at http://www.smallbusinesshostingpackages.com
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